Lord of the Dance

I danced in the morningWhen the world was begun,And I danced in the moonAnd the stars and the sun,And I came down from heaveAnd I danced on the earth,At Bethlehem I had my birth.

Dance, then,wherever you may be,I am the Lord of the Dance, said he,And I'll lead you all,wherever you may be,And I'll lead you allin the Dance, said he.

I danced for the scribeAnd the pharisee,But they would not dance And they wouldn't follow me.I danced for the fishermen,For James and John -They came with meAnd the Dance went on.

I danced on the SabbathAnd I cured the lame;The holy peopleSaid it was a shame.They whipped and they strippedAnd they hung me on high,And they left me thereOn a Cross to die.

I danced on a FridayWhen the sky turned black -It's hard to danceWith the devil on your back.They buried my bodyAnd they thought I'd gone,But I am the Dance,And I still go on.

They cut me downAnd I leapt up high;I am the lifeThat'll never, never die;I'll live in youIf you'll live in me -I am the LordOf the Dance, said he.

This popular hymn was written in 1963 and published in the author’s Carols and Ballads. It owes much to the traditional Christmas Carol ‘Tomorrow shall be my dancing day’.

Sydney Bertram Carter was an English poet, folk musician and Quaker. He was born in Camden Town, London, and studied at Oxford University. During the war he served, as a committed pacifist, in the Friends’ Ambulance.

Carter wrote the lyrics "Lord Of The Dance" as an adaptation of Joseph Brackett's "Simple Gifts" and as a tribute to Shaker music. He once said, "I did not think the churches would like it at all. I thought many people would find it pretty far flown, probably heretical and anyway dubiously Christian. But in fact people did sing it and, unknown to me, it touched a chord… it's the sort of Christianity I believe in."

Lord of the Dance takes the idea of a carol a stage further and presents the whole of God’s plan of creation and redemption as a dance. It begins ‘in the morning when the world was begun’ and ends with the cross and resurrection.

The Shaker Tune is a traditional Shaker Melody. Shakers were members of a movement which seceded from the Society of Friends [Quakers] in 1747. They were celibate, taught the imminent Second Coming of Christ and worshipped through dancing and singing.

Sydney Carter wrote of Lord of the Dance: "I see Christ as the incarnation of the piper who is calling us. He dances that shape and pattern which is at the heart of our reality. By Christ I mean not only Jesus; in other times and places, other planets, there may be other Lords of the Dance. But Jesus is the one I know of first and best. I sing of the dancing pattern in the life and words of Jesus.

Whether Jesus ever leaped in Galilee to the rhythm of a pipe or drum I do not know. We are told that David danced [and as an act of worship too], so it is not impossible. The fact that many Christians have regarded dancing as a bit ungodly [in a church, at any rate] does not mean that Jesus did.

The Shakers didn't. This sect flourished in the United States in the nineteenth century, but the first Shakers came from Manchester in England, where they were sometimes called the "Shaking Quakers". They hived off to America in 1774, under the leadership of Mother Anne. Dancing, for them, was a spiritual activity. They also made furniture of a functional, lyrical simplicity. Their hymns were odd, but sometimes of great beauty. For a change I sing the whole song in the present tense. 'I dance in the morning when the world is begun...'. It's worth a try"